Where Do We Go Now (the Movie)

Where Do We Go Now is a great movie to watch if you like foreign films and don’t mind reading sub-titles through the whole thing.  Or if you understand Arabic.  (I’m assuming that’s the language they are speaking in this small village in Lebanon.)  Sub-titles don’t bother me at all (since I’m slowly going deaf) especially when it comes to making out some of the dialogue in movies.  So I almost always turn on the English sub-titles even when the movie is in English.  Otherwise I’ll have the volume up loud enough to break other people’s ear drums.

I suppose in part this movie is a sort of light-hearted exploration of religious tension. The setting is a small village where a church and a mosque stand side by side and the villagers are either Muslims or Christians.  And half the time I had no idea which was which.  Their country is in turmoil with fighting amongst religious zealots, so there is the potential for violence in their small community.

The women are tired of losing sons, husbands and fathers in previous flare-ups and decide to join together to try to distract their men from fighting.  They fake a miracle, destroy the only television in the village so no one can watch the news, hire some scantily clad Eastern European strippers, spend a day baking with drugs so that all the men at one point end up stoned.  There’s a lot of funny stuff.  But there’s also some harsh scenes, some romance, a tragedy, and some great music.

The over all message I think is simply to show us that war is futile.  All the fighting ultimately solves nothing.   It’s possible and preferable to peacefully co-exist despite our differences.  Yes, all those things we already know but find so hard to put into practice.

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